Endgame

Portuguese seafarers, who pioneered the sea route to India in the late 15th century, were regular visitors to the South African coast during the early 1500s. Other Europeans followed from the late 16th century.

South Africa was colonized by the English and Dutch in the seventeenth century. English domination of the Dutch descendants (known as Boers or Afrikaners) resulted in the Dutch establishing the new colonies of Orange Free State and Transvaal.

The 1860s saw the British embark on serious mineral exploitation, starting with diamond mining in Griqualand West. The discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfields in 1886 was a turning point in the history of South Africa. It presaged the emergence of the modern South African industrial state. Southern African gold had been exported for thousands of years to the Arab Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, but it had never been exploited on a massive scale. Now it was to be the focus of reckless European speculators and the investment houses of the world.

The mineral discoveries had a major impact on the subcontinent as a whole. A railway network linking the interior to the coastal ports revolutionised transportation and energised agriculture. Coastal cities such as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban experienced an economic boom.

The discovery of diamonds in the Afrikaner colonies of Orange Free State and Transvaal around 1900 resulted in an English invasion which sparked the Boer War. The Afrikaners' guerrilla tactics were harder to beat than the British had imagined and the British grew increasingly ruthless, resorting to a scorched earth policy and the confinement of Afrikaners - women and children - into huge concentration camps. Nearly 28,000 died of disease and dysentery. The memory of the British aggression was ingrained in the minds of many Afrikaners for ever after.

It took another 11 years for a solution to be hammered bringing the Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal and Cape Colony together into the Union of South Africa. The cultural differences between the two remained sharply defined. The Afrikaners held on to their language (a dialect of Dutch) and the majority clung to the idea of racial superiority.

On paper, South Africa was a self-governing Dominion of the British Commonwealth. British interests were entrenched commercially, politically and culturally the British continued to be in conflict with the Afrikaners for years to come, but happy to take advantage of a system which provided cheap African labour and a high standard of living for white people.

The 1940's saw South Africa participating in World War II, as it was closely allied with Great Britain, its head of state being the British King. Strong opposition to the war by the Afrikaners resulted in more support for and the subsequent rise to power of the anti-British Nationalist Party. Meanwhile in 1944 the ANC Youth League was formed with Nelson Mandela as its secretary, which engaged in a 50 year long conflict with the Nationalist Party.

In 1948 the Nationalist Party gained power and Apartheid became the official government policy. Apartheid sparked significant internal resistance from groups which included black, coloured, Indian and white organisations. Matters came to a head at Sharpeville in March 1960, when 69 anti-pass demonstrators were killed when police fired on a peaceful demonstration called by the Pan Africanist Congress: A state of emergency was imposed and detention without trial was introduced.